


tap to a crash

by Vintar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feferi has a plan to singlehandedly overthrow the Black Queen. Kanaya has a few issues with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tap to a crash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [odditycollector](https://archiveofourown.org/users/odditycollector/gifts).



carcinoGeneticist [CG] has opened memo SJHFBKSHDGFKGSDFKSDGFFFFF

GA: Uh  
GC: >:?  
TC: hAhAhA wHaT  
AC: :33 < karkatnip are you okay?  
CG: I'VE DECIDED TO SAVE TIME BY BANGING MY SKULLPLATE ON MY KEYBOARD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEMO, RATHER THAN WAITING FOR IT TO INEVITABLY DEVOLVE INTO ITS USUAL TORNADO OF DIPSHITTERY.  
CG: I AM NOW IMMUNE TO THE TORRENT OF DRIVEL THAT'S ABOUT TO GUSH FORTH FROM YOUR CLUELESS GAPING FACEHOLES ONTO MY SCREEN. DO YOUR WORST.  
GA: Well This Is A Text Thing So If Anything Its Going To Gush Forth From Our Typestubs  
TA: nah ii riigged up a text two 2peech program, my facehole i2 priimed and ready two go.  
GA: Okay Our Typestubs And Solluxs Facehole  
CC: Accurasea is important! 38)  
CG: AND WE'RE OFF TO A STRONG START. GOOD JOB, TEAM!  
CG: NOW, FOR THE SIXTY-FIVE MILLION BOONBUCK QUESTION: HAS ANYONE ACTUALLY MADE ANY OF THE PROGRESS I ASKED YOU TO?  
CT: D --> No  
AT: nOT REALLY,  
AG: Hell no!  
CG: WOW! THANKS, GANG! YOUR HONESTY IS APPRECIATED.  
AT: rEALLY,  
CG: FUCK NO. YOU'RE ALL FIRED. I'M GOING TO REPLACE YOU ALL WITH CONSORTS.  
CG: PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF IN MY NEW IMPROVED CONSORT TEAM YOU'D RATHER BE PLAYED BY A SHITTY TURTLE OR A SHITTY LIZARD.  
GC: SH1TTY L1Z4RD PL34S3  
CA: look i wwoulda done all that stuff you asked kar but i'vve kind of had a lot on my plate  
GA: Like Killin Angels  
CA: these angels are  
CA: wwell that's just plain rude  
CG: I WAS GOING TO ASK YOU ALL TO FOCUS AND WORK TOGETHER, BUT I'VE JUST DECIDED TO GO WITH A MORE REALISTIC TACTIC.  
CG: TAKE YOUR COLLECTIVE GRIPNUBS OUT OF YOUR COLLECTIVE WASTEHOLES OR I AM GOING TO VISIT YOUR WORLDS AND SHOUT INCREDIBLY LOUDLY STRAIGHT INTO YOUR HEARPITS.  
CG: IT WILL BE AN UNCEASING SCREAM OF AGONY BROADCAST STRAIGHT FROM A DIMENSION OF PURE TORMENT, THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD AND WILL NEVER HEAR AGAIN. OCEANS WILL RISE. CITIES WILL FALL. I WILL BE THERE, CALLING YOU A USELESS BULGECRAMP.  
CG: TIME TO GET SERIOUS. SO, ITEM ONE: WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE BLACK QUEEN.  
CG: WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A NIGHTMARE BITCH FROM HELL?  
AA: i let her kill me thus f0stering an immense sense 0f guilt and shame  
TA: ehehehe, boom!  
AG: WOW. Really, Megido? Really????????  
CG: WELL, WE'VE LEARNED ONE THING TODAY. IT TURNS OUT THAT TRYING TO DEAL WITH STUPIDITY BEFORE IT HAPPENS DOESN'T HELP AT ALL! HERE I GO.  
CG: ALSKJDFLKS  
CG: IUKJSDFKSFJH  
CG: SDLFJHLSDFLSKJLJ  
AC: :33 < karkat no  
CG: LKSDFGJLOJDFGDFGJL  
AG: I can't believe you're still mad about that!  
CG: KSJDKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK;  
AA: i'm n0t mad. i can't be mad. i'm dead.  
CG: LK;MAGADSGDF;MK  
CT: D --> This is unseemly. You will stop  
AC: :33 < don't tell him what to do  
AG: Knock the sad ghost routine off already, we're all sick of it!  
AG: Oh no, I'm dead, boo hoo hoo!!!!!!!!  
CT: D --> But you just told him to stop  
AC: :33 < that's diffurent!  
TA: maybe iit'2 ju2t you who'2 2iick of aa.  
TA: gee, ii wonder why that could be.  
AG: I'm sorry, did I ask for advice from the geek squad?  
GC: 3V3RYON3 SHUT UP!  
GC: 1 H4V3 4N 1MPORT4NT QU3ST1ON  
GC: DO YOU TH1NK K4RK4T STOPP3D B3C4US3 H3 C4LM3D DOWN OR B3C4US3 H3 P4SS3D OUT  
GC: PL4C3 YOUR B3TS!  
TA: pa22ed out  
AA: passed 0ut  
CC: passed out!  
AG: Passed out.  
CA: then i'll go wwith calmed dowwn  
GC: C4N W3 H4V3 TH3 V3RD1CT FROM TH3 JURY PL34S3  
TC: HaHa, PoOr lItTlE DuDe sMaCkEd hIs pAn rEaL HaRd aNd pAsSeD OuT LiKe a MoThErFuCkEr  
GC: LOOKS L1K3 1TS T1M3 TO P4Y UP 3R1D4N >:]  
CA: awwww man not again  
GA: Another Terribly Productive Meeting  
GA: Good Job Team

 

CC: Kanaya marineam!  
GA: Feferi  
GA: Um  
GA: Hmm  
CC: Take your time!  
GA: Peiseas  
CC: 38D  
GA: Frankly Embarrassing Attempts At Wordplay Aside What Can I Do For You  
CC: I )(ave a karkat question!  
GA: Why Arent You Asking Him  
CC: If I want to know a fish fact I'd have better luck asking a fishologist than asking a fish!  
GA: Im Sure I Dont Know What That Means  
CC: S)(OR--E you don't. 38)  
CC: (I'm winking be)(ind my goggles)  
GA: Word Boomerang I Am Denying Everything Word Boomerang  
CC: You being TOTALLY OBVIOUS aside, do you think that )(e seems just SLIG)(TLY more stressed than usual?  
GA: He Spent All Of Yesterday On My Planet Screaming Obscenities At Frogs  
GA: Does That Count  
CC: Did the frogs deserve it?  
GA: Not Entirely  
CC: T)(en I t)(ink it mig)(t!  
CC: I've been friends wit)( t)(ings t)(at live in t)(e deepest darkest dept)(s of the ocean and I've still N-EV----ER seen someone under as muc)( pressure as )(e is!  
CC: So I t)(oug)(t maybe we could c)(eer )(im up by doing somet)(ing nice for )(im!  
GA: What Did You Have In Mind  
GA: Movie Night  
GA: Getting Everyone To Be Completely Silent For A Whole Day  
CC: Stealing t)(e black queen's ring?  
GA: Well It Would Be Easier Than Trying To Get Everyone To Be Quiet  
GA: But Karkats Already Working On A Big Complicated Plan Of Attack  
GA: He Has A Whiteboard And Everything Its Very Impressive  
GA: What Makes You Think Just The Two Of Us Can Do It  
CC: We know from jack t)(at t()e ring is in )(er quarters. T)(ink about it! T)(e two of us can sneak in more easily by oarselves t)(an if everyone else comes along.  
GA: I Can Think Of A Few Teammates Who Wouldnt Exactly Bring A Lot To The Stealth Table  
GA: I Can Think Of A Few Teammates Who Would Trip Over The Stealth Table And Roll Around On The Floor Clutching Their Strutbones And Complaining Loudly  
CC: Like ----EV-ERY SINGL-E P-ERSON W-E KNOW?  
GA: Mayb Dash Dash Dash E  
CC: )(-E)(-E)(-E!  
CC: Okay, it's settled! I'm going to send you a plan of something to alchemetise.  
CC: T)(en come drop in to my world! 38)

 

As Kanaya dropped through the gate to the Land of Dew and Glass, she remembered a few things. The first, fairly important thing was that Feferi's land had a odd design. The second, slightly more important thing was that Feferi loved nothing so much as amusing herself. 

Kanaya had just enough time to catch a glimpse of Feferi sitting on the fishbowl rim and waving to her, and then she hit the water with both feet.

The third, possibly most important thing she remembered was that she couldn't swim. A school of rainbow-coloured fish darted curiously to and fro around her as she plummeted through the water, just in case she turned out to be a very large and very angry piece of bread.

Just as she was considering the odds that her quest bed would be located at the bottom of a giant fishbowl (remote, but extremely helpful), a hand grabbed her by the back of her collar and began to yank her back away from the light (figuratively) and back towards the light (literally).

Meeting the other trolls face-to-face had been interesting. There had been so many little physical things that she hadn't expected from talking to them on Trollian: the edges of Terezi's ears, cartilage burnt into strange shapes; the way Karkat's default posture was a slouchy hunch, as defensive in nature as his lusus; the way Vriska leaned a little into the weight of her robot arm. Feferi in the flesh had always looked odd in a way that Kanaya had never been able to put her finger on, something that had nothing to do with her fins or her gills.

When Kanaya looked up in the water with the intent to glare at her rescuer, something clicked. If Feferi had looked odd, it had been because the right context was missing. In the water, she made sense. The thin membranes of her fins caught the light that streamed down from the surface, dappling her cheeks and the fine fringes of her gills in faint tyrian light. Her legs didn't seem short so much as compact, propelling her effortlessly through the water. Her hair flowed around her face like tentacles, or possibly some sort of anemone. At least, Kanaya was pretty sure that what she was thinking of was an anemone. Everything was getting a bit strange, and she wasn't sure how much of a role the oxygen deprivation had to play in it.

When they broke the surface, she was vaguely relieved to be made fun of. 

"Wow, that's the worst attempt at swimming I've ever seen!" Feferi said over Kanaya's spluttering, holding her up under her armpits. She swung her legs back and forth lazily, tapping Kanaya in the shins with every stroke. 

Kanaya coughed. "I've spent my entire life in a desert," she protested weakly. "Where was I supposed to learn to swim?"

Feferi hummed thoughtfully for a moment. "Quicksand?"

Kanaya stared at her, though she suspected the effect was dampened by the way her wet hair hung down over her eyes. "Pardon me for not flinging myself into quicksand to practice my woofbeast-paddle. How could I have made such an oversight?" 

"Sure! You're forgiven!" Feferi chimed, and before Kanaya could say anything further, swung herself back up onto the see-through edge of her world and offered a hand to Kanaya. When the wet fabric of Feferi's skirts squeaked against the glass, they made a noise like a finger on a wine glass. When Kanaya took her hand and clambered up next to her, her wet clothing made a noise like _squnk_ , which just went to show that some days everything was determined to be unfair.

Feferi snagged a terminally curious fish out of the water with her bare toes and passed it to Gl'bgolybsprite, peering over her shoulder like an friendly clump of animated noodles. "Old habits die hard," she said in response to Kanaya's frown. "Or do you want one, too? I bet I could find a nice green one!"

Kanaya gently shooed a pale tentacle away from her. "I'll pass, thank you."

"Your loss." Feferi gave Gl'bgolybsprite a pat behind a particularly eldritch spot, and excitedly kicked her toes in the water. "Did you make the thing?"

Perhaps due to a life not spent in twelve copies of the same pants and shirt combination, Kanaya had had greater luck with alchemitising outfits than the others, although Terezi didn't seem to mind the disaster that was her Amazing Technicolour Extremecoat, and the less said about Equius's REINCOAT the better. What she'd alchemitised from Feferi's design was perfect. It was stylish. It was an exact replica of the Black Queen's outfit.

"It looks amazing!" Feferi trilled when Kanaya unlocked it from her (thankfully waterproof) fetch modus. She spun around with her back to Kanaya. "Give me a moment!" 

Kanaya realised what she was doing a second later, when Feferi yanked her shirt up over her head. She looked away, but not before getting a glimpse of more grey skin than she'd been expecting to see without dinner and a movie. 

When Feferi gave the all clear a minute later, she was too busy trying on the matching shoes to notice the burning green flush of Kanaya's ears. Feferi peered at her reflection in the water, trying to stuff the damp mass of her hair up underneath the crown. "It's perfect, Kanayacht! I'll be able to walk right in. They'll never notice a thing!"

A suspicion rose up in Kanaya's mind. "Wait, the plan was to..." She looked at Feferi despairingly. "That's not going to work." 

"Why not?" said Feferi, though Kanaya had known her long enough to suspect that it was intended to be spelled _knot_ , or possibly _naut_.

"For one thing, you have a face. Unless the Black Queen is very different to her Prospit counterpart, someone might notice a slight difference."

"Psht! I've been investigating the Dersites, and I don't think they'll really notice. Is the average carapace on your side that much smarter?"

They weren't, but Kanaya wasn't about to let that stop her. "So your plan is to walk right in to the palace, hope that no-one notices that the queen has grown bright orange horns and shrunk overnight, and just take the ring?"

Feferi twisted to try to see her outfit from different angles in the reflection of the water. "I think that's about it, yes!"

"Not to insult your plan, but I think we need a different plan. One that's less... not good."

When Feferi was annoyed, she tended to pinch her slit nostrils shut and press her fins flat against the sides of her head. Kanaya had seen the general effect whenever Eridan accidentally-on-purpose bumped into them, and she was seeing it now. "I think this plan is fine. The Black Queen is way too dangerous to try to take on directly! We can't just wait and try to fork her when her back is turned. She's clever and vicious and terrible. What do you suggest we do?"

Kanaya had just enough self-control to stop herself from saying _Seduce her?_ , and instead filed that particular daydream away for future reference. She shook herself back to reality. "I'll think about it. I'm sure we can come up with something more responsible." She tried to wring water out of her hair. "Maybe we need a whiteboard."

Feferi leaned in and tapped Kanaya on the nose, grinning her unsettling shark smile at Kanaya's affronted expression. "Whelk, I'm going to the palace tomorrow. If you think of a better way to get into the Black Queen's quarters, let me know!" She slid backwards into the water, her hair spilling out to match the black of her new costume. "If you can't, that's okay! Not everyone can be creative under pressure."

Kanaya waited until she'd dived down out of sight under the water, then blew a raspberry at her.

 

CG: YOU WERE AT LODAG TODAY, RIGHT? DID THE TWO OF YOU MANAGE TO MEDDLE UP ANY IDEAS THAT'LL HELP US WIN THE GAME, OR DID YOU JUST SIT AROUND AND BRAID EACH OTHER'S HAIR ALL DAY?  
GA: Well I Did Come Away With Some Things To Think About  
CG: ANYTHING THAT I CAN PUT ON THE WHITEBOARD?  
GA: Id Rather You Didnt

 

The shuttle from Prospit to Derse was rather on the full side, but the carapaces politely gave Kanaya's dream self a wide berth. The yellow pyjamas, although a nightmare to coordinate with, commanded a level of civilian respect that almost verged on fear. Kanaya wasn't sure why. Perhaps they were worried about all that yellow making their complexions look washed out as well.

The next person along from her was a parcel mistress, lugging an overfull bag. Between the terrible monsters and the fact that the most popular pastime had been random murder, Alternia had tended to rely on electronic communication instead of trying to send things by hand. Kanaya wasn't sure what Prospitians needed to communicate to Derse, but by the size of the bag and the proud but tired look on parcel mistress's face, it needed to be said often, and at great volume.

Slowly, an idea started to take form.

"It looks like you've got a lot of mail there," Kanaya said politely.

The parcel mistress nodded.

A real stealth operative on a real stealth mission would have lulled the target into a false sense of security, keeping their objective hidden while manipulating the conversation to their own ends. As far as Kanaya was concerned that seemed like a lot of work, and sometimes a more straightforward approach seemed the best. "Would you like some help with it?" she asked.

Kanaya Maryam stepped off of the shuttle wearing a spare Skaian Mail Service jacket, formally deputised to deliver a small selection of mail to the palace.

 

Kanaya found Feferi at the back of the main palace, which turned out to be, rather disorientingly, the flipped mirror image of the Prospitian palace. Years of wandering Prospit led to her having to stop herself from walking into walls that should have been corridors. 

Feferi was hiding behind an unnecessarily baroque piece of architecture. "What are you wearing?" she asked, eyes wide. 

"I slipped into something more comfortable," Kanaya said. "And more likely to not be a terrible plan."

Feferi jumped down from her hiding spot and adjusted her crown. "We'll see about that."

 

Derse's Official Cleric looked up from her desk to discover that, for some reason, the Queen and a postal mistress had appeared in her office. As she threw herself down into a bow, she couldn't help but notice that the Queen looked slightly different than usual. The war had been taking its toll on them all, she supposed. It was tragic. The Queen did have an excellent new hat, though, which was heartening.

The two of them appeared to be in the middle of a heated conversation, though the Official Cleric wasn't sure of what the Queen and a member of the post could possibly have to argue about. Stamps, perhaps. It had been a long time since Derse's last celebratory stamp collection had been released, and the public was starting to be eager for another. How blessed they were on Derse, to have a ruler kind enough to look into such small matters.

They were so caught up in their conversation that they didn't appear to notice her. She coughed politely. The two of them looked at her. She looked at them.

"Hello," said the Black Queen. "Um. I like your bowing! It's very nice!"

"Official office inspection," said the postal mistress. "I'm inspecting offices. For. Uh. Changes to addresses."

The Official Cleric scrambled back to her desk. After a brief moment taken to rummage through paperwork (such neat paperwork! Surely they had to notice that!), she presented them with the file that contained the office's proper location designation.

"Hmm," said the postal mistress, pouring over the file as the Official Cleric waited in agony. "Hmmmm."

"Oh for glub's sake!" the Black Queen barked. 

"Yes. This is an excellent address," said the postal mistress, handing back the file. "Good job. Keep it up."

"Let's go, already!"

"Hold your hoofbeasts." The Postal Mistress rummaged around in her bag, and fished out a parcel. "I think this is for you," she said. "Congratulations."

The Official Cleric clasped the parcel and bowed again as the two of them left, then, buoyed by her bounty of good luck, mustered up the courage to peek around her door and watch them scurry down the hallway. 

"People don't say congratulations when they deliver mail!" hissed the Black Queen.

"And queens say 'I like your bowing?'" said the Post Mistress, and at the end of the corridor, turned and walked straight into a wall.

Very carefully, the Official Cleric shut the door. After a moment of deep thought, she fetched two pencils and a rubber band from her stationary draw, and bowed to popular fashion. It was very kind of the Queen to pay her a visit, and that hat had been really very neat.

 

"Mail for you," said Kanaya, handing an envelope to a Personal Guardian.

"Queen here, coming through!" said Feferi, and the two of them strolled into the Black Queen's quarters as one guard bowed neatly and the other eagerly opened a letter from a penpal.

"We made it!" Feferi crowed. "Now, let's get the ring."

The two of them looked over the room, which remained stubbornly ringless in the face of scrutiny. "I don't know for sure," Kanaya said carefully, "but I have a hunch that it might be in the giant locked vault."

The two of them stared at it in silence for a while.

"I didn't really think this far ahead," Feferi admitted. She chewed her lip. "How are we supposed to know the combination?"

Kanaya looked around the room. "How thick do you think those doors are?" she asked.

The answer turned out to be 'thick enough to muffle the sound of a chainsaw cutting through a secure vault door', which was approximately the answer that Kanaya had hoped for.

Feferi jammed her fingers into the gap where Kanaya had cut through the thick metal of the vault door, squared her feet, and pulled. The vault door was heavy, but Feferi had spent her childhood dragging lusii down to the bottom of the ocean. Slowly, the immense weight of the door swung open. Kanaya stared at her arms.

"Phew!" Feferi wiped her brow. "You know, you could have cut the door at the hinges instead. Then it would have just fallen off!"

"Yes," said Kanaya, and her better judgement apparently having taken the day off, added "but then I wouldn't have got to see you do that."

Feferi stared, and then broke into a smile. "Well!" she said, after a while. "That's sea-rtainly interesting! But right now our treasure awaits!"

Suspicious of anything in the game being too easy, Kanaya half expected the ring not be there, or to be in the belly of a cholerbeast. One that was rigged to a bomb. And possibly on fire. When they peered inside, though, it was nestled gently on a pillow. The two of them reached for it at the same time, then paused as their hands knocked together. 

"I'll take that, thank you very much. I'm the leader, after all." Feferi tried to nudge Kanaya's hand away.

Kanaya nudged back. "We never said anything about a leader."

"I thought it was obvious!"

"I opened the vault."

"I opened it too! Look, all of this was my plan, and I'd like to take the ring back to everyone!" Feferi leaned into the vault, arm to arm with Kanaya.

Kanaya leaned back against her. "I made the dress."

"Why are you doing this?" Feferi's eyes narrowed in the frightening way that only someone with extra eyelids could pull off. "You know what? I think you just want to be the one to take it back to Karkat."

"No," Kanaya lied.

Before Kanaya could do anything, Feferi snatched the ring and held it, grinning, behind her back. "You do!" she crowed. "Your ears are going bright green, Canoeya. You've got pale eelings!" 

An excited Feferi was a terrible thing when you were in a bad mood; every pun and drawn-out E made Kanaya's fingers twitch. She couldn't help herself. "And I suppose you wanting to take it has nothing to do with needing to be the ruling queen of the session?"

Feferi puffed her fins out. "Rude!" she said. "Whale, you're definitely not getting it now!"

Feferi could move like lightning underwater, but Kanaya had the height advantage and had spent a lot of years both fighting the undead and doing some quite strenuous pruning. She spun Feferi around by one shoulder and, as Feferi yelped with annoyance, grabbed the ring.

"Look," she began, because giving placating speeches was easier when you had the upper hand. That was as far as she got, however, because Feferi elbowed her in the stomach.

Kanaya didn't know all that much about hand-to-hand combat, but somewhere along the line in the resulting struggle, it began to dawn on her that something wasn't quite standard. For starters, it was called hand-to-hand combat, but what they were doing seemed to involve a disproportionately large amount of mouth-to-mouth, and in the movies it generally didn't seem to involve quite so much of the aggrieving party copping a feel. Feferi jammed her thumb against Kanaya's already-bruising side and made a noise that was so intriguing that Kanaya had to pinch her hard just to try to make her do it again.

The door creaked open. The two of them stopped what they were doing and looked up.

The Black Queen looked impassively down at the two of them.

Kanaya held up her postbag. "Mail for you?"

 

Feferi sighed deeply, resting her head against the bars of the Derse Jail.

"It was worth a try," Kanaya said.

"It was," said Feferi sadly. "I would have liked to keep the crown, though!"

"I would have liked to keep the jacket." Kanaya pulled the collar of her shirt up, but she could tell that it wasn't anywhere near to covering the bruise on her neck where one of Feferi's horns had hit her. Feferi gave her a sly look, and Kanaya looked away, cheeks burning.

"All things being said, I did have a lot of fun." Feferi said, and laughed. "It beat a day of reading memos!"

Both of them jumped as the jail creaked open, then brightened as a familiar scowl appeared, carrying a box. Jack jerked a thumb over his shoulder and the guard on duty scurried out, keen to be anywhere where the Archagent wasn't.

"We're being busted! Yes!" Feferi clapped her hands. "Psst!" she hissed. "Jack! Over here!"

"Please don't stab us," Kanaya added.

Jack shrugged, as if it was no skin off of his nose if they turned down a perfectly good stabbing, and handed them a box through the bars. 

Inside was a cake, neatly frosted. In carefully piped grey icing, it read _I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE HOW STUPID YOU BOTH ARE_.

Feferi scooped a small bit of it up and gave it an experimental taste. "It's really nice! Thanks, Karkat." She poked another finger into it, and wiggled it around curiously. "Where's the file, though? There's got to be a file, right?"

Wordlessly, Jack left the room and came back with another box. 

_DO THINK I'M GOING TO LET YOU DENSE FUCKS OFF THAT EASILY?_ , it said.

"Chocolate," Kanaya said, nibbling at a handful of _DENSE FUCKS_. "Well, I'm glad he's taken up a hobby."

"Jack," Feferi said cautiously, "how many cakes did he send, exactly?"

Jack left the room again. When he returned, he was pushing a pallet of cake boxes. The next cake read _FIRST OF ALL, THIS IS FUCKING SUBORDINATION, AND I WON'T STAND FOR IT. SECONDLY, WHAT DID YOU (CONT NEXT CAKE)_.

"Hobbies are supposed to calm people down." Kanaya said. "I didn't know it was even possible to bake this angrily."

Feferi groaned. "Could you just give us the last cake?"

Jack obediently pulled out a box from the bottom of the pile and opened the lid. The frosting read _NICE TRY, BULGELORDS._

The two of them stared at the pile of confectionery admonition that awaited them. "How are we supposed to tell which one has the file inside?" Feferi said, exasperated.

Jack looked at the pile of cakes, made a face, and went over to the guard's desk. He rummaged around in a drawer for a moment, then threw them the ring of cell keys.

Feferi watched him go. "It seems a shame to waste all those cakes."

"Karkat probably shouted his consorts into making them, don't worry." Kanaya opened a few boxes, eventually settling on a nice chocolate _YOUR REPORT AS SOON AS YOU DRAG YOUR EMBARRASSING CARCASSES BACK TO BASE, AND_.

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to take this, and go sit on the roof, and eat at least up to 'carcasses.'" She offered her arm.

"Shore sounds good to me!" Feferi said. 

On the way out, she elbowed Kanaya in the side and took the box.


End file.
